More MeditationsMeditation of the WeekFeel – Don’t Think

Feel – Don’t Think

You are sitting in the garden, the traffic is passing by and there are many noises and many sounds. You just close your eyes and try to find the subtlest sound there is around you. A crow is cawing: just concentrate yourself on that crow’s noise. The whole traffic noise is going on. The sound is such, it is so subtle, that you cannot be aware of it unless you focus your awareness towards it. But if you focus your awareness, the whole traffic noise will go far away and the noise of the crow will become the center. And you will hear it, all the nuances of it – very subtle, but you will be able to hear it.

Grow in sensitivity. When you touch, when you hear, when you eat, when you take a bath, allow your senses to be open. And don't think – feel.

You are standing under the shower: feel the coolness of the water falling on you. Don’t think about it. Don’t immediately say, “It is very cool. It is cold. It is good.” Don’t say anything. Don’t verbalize, because the moment you verbalize, you miss feeling. The moment words come in, the mind has started to function. Don’t verbalize. Feel the coolness and don’t say that it is cool.

We go on saying things, not even aware of what we are saying. Stop verbalizing; only then can you deepen your feelings. If feelings are deepened, then this technique can work miracles for you.

Feel: my thought

Close your eyes and feel the thought. A continuous flow of thoughts is there, a continuum, a flux; a river of thoughts is flowing. Feel these thoughts, feel their presence. And the more you feel, the more will be revealed to you – layers upon layers. Not only thoughts that are just on the surface; behind them there are more thoughts, and behind them there are still more thoughts – layers upon layers.

And the technique says, 'Feel: my thought.' And we go on saying, “These are my thoughts.” But feel – are they really yours? Can you say “my”? The more you feel, the less will it be possible for you to say that they are yours. They are all borrowed, they are all from the outside. They have come to you but they are not yours. No thought is yours – just dust gathered. Even if you cannot recognize the source from where this thought has come to you, no thought is yours. If you try hard, you can find from where this thought has come to you.

Only the inner silence is yours. No one has given it to you. You were born with it, and you will die with it. Thoughts have been given to you; you have been conditioned to them. If you are a Hindu, you have a different type, a different set of thoughts; if you are a Mohammedan, of course, a different set of thoughts; if you are a communist, again a different set of thoughts. They have been given to you, or you may have taken them voluntarily, but no thought is yours.

If thoughts are not mine then nothing matters, because this too is a thought – that you are my wife, or you are my husband. This too is a thought. And if basically thought itself is not mine, then how can the husband be mine? Or how can the wife be mine? Thoughts uprooted, the whole world is uprooted. Then you can live in the world and not live in it.